Ben Bova - Mercury

by Mercury(lit)

  "My father is well," he said at last. It was not a lie, although Nobu had not heard from his father for many months.

  "I am pleased to hear it. He has great strength of character to abandon this world and take the hard path toward enlightenment."

  And I do not have strength of character? Nobu snarled inwardly. Is this old assassin throwing an insult into my teeth?

  Aloud, however, he said merely, "Yet some of us must remain in this world and carry its burdens."

  "Most true, sir."

  "How many years has it been since the skytower fell?" Nobuhiko asked.

  "Not enough for anyone to dare suggest building another."

  "So. That is good."

  The old man dipped his chin again in acknowledgement.

  "Have all the people who participated in the event been properly disposed of?"

  "They have been tracked down and accounted for." Both men knew what that meant.

  "All of them?"

  The old man hesitated only a fraction of a second. "All but one."

  "One?" Nobu snapped, suddenly angry. "After all this time, one of them still lives?"

  "He is either very clever or very lucky."

  "Who is he? Where is he?"

  "He is the nanotechnology expert that we recruited from Selene."

  Nobu could feel his pulse thundering in his ears. Before he could respond to his servant's words the old man added:

  "He has changed his identity and his appearance several times. Even his retinal patterns have been altered, my agents report. The man is something of a genius."

  "He must be found," Nobu said firmly. "And dealt with."

  "He will be, I assure you."

  "I don't want assurances. I want results!"

  "Sir, please do not alarm yourself. The man is neutralized. He cannot tell anyone of his part in the skytower project without revealing his true identity. If he should dare to do that, we would locate him and deal with him. He is intelligent enough to understand that, so he maintains his silence."

  "Not good enough," said Nobu. "I will not be held dependent on this fugitive's decisions."

  "So I understand, sir. We are tracking him down."

  "No one must know why are tracking him!"

  "No one does, sir, except you and me."

  Nobuhiko took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

  The old man added, "And once he is found and disposed of, I too will leave this world. Then only you will have the knowledge of the skytower program."

  "You?"

  "I have lived long enough. Once this obligation to you is filled, my master, I will join my honorable ancestors."

  Nobu stood on the gravel path and stared at this relic from the ancient past. The chill wind blew the man's long white hair across his face, hiding his expression from Nobu. Still, Yamagata could see the implacable determination in those unblinking eyes.

  BETRAYAL

  Months slipped into years. Alhambra plied its slow, silent way through the Belt and then back toward Earth at least once a year. Bracknell saw the blue and white splendor of his home world, close enough almost to touch, bright clouds and sparkling seas and land covered with green. All his life was there, all his hopes and love and dreams. But he never reached it. The captain and other crew members shuttled down to the surface for a few days each time they visited Earth, but Bracknell stayed aboard the ship, knowing that no port of entry would accept an exile, not even for a day or two of ship's liberty. Nor would Selene or any of the other lunar settlements.

  Each time, once Alhambra's crew unloaded the refined metals it had carried in its hold and taken a few days' liberty, Captain Farad headed back to the dark silence of the Belt once more.

  Like a vision of heaven, Bracknell said to himself as the glowing blue and white sphere dwindled in the distance. It grew blurry as his eyes teared.

  He grew a beard, then shaved it off. He had a brief affair with a woman who signed aboard as a crew member to pay for her passage on a one-way trip from Earth to Ceres, feeling almost ashamed of himself whenever he saw Addie. By the time his erstwhile lover left the ship he was glad to be rid of her.

  The captain never relaxed his vigilance over his daughter, although he seemed to grow more tolerant of Bracknell holding casual conversations with her. He even invited Bracknell to have dinner with himself and his daughter, at rare intervals. The captain was sensitive enough never to talk about Earth nor to ask Bracknell about his former life.

  Addie began to explain Buddhism to him, trying to help him accept the life that had been forced upon him.

  "It is only temporary," she would tell him. "This life will wither away and a new life will begin. The great wheel turns slowly, but it does turn. You must be patient."

  Bracknell listened and watched her animated face as she earnestly explained the path toward enlightenment. He never believed a word of it, but it helped to pass the time.

  On some visits to Earth, Alhambra picked up other groups of convicts exiled to the Belt. The captain forbade Bracknell and the other crew members to have anything to do with them beyond what was absolutely necessary.

  When fights broke out among the prisoners in the hold, the captain lowered their air pressure until everyone passed out. Then Bracknell and other crew members crammed the troublemakers into old-fashioned hard-shell spacesuits and tethered them outside the ship until they learned their lesson. It had happened many times, but Bracknell never became inured to it. Always he thought, There but for the grace of god go I.

  Then he would ask himself, God? If there is a god he must be as callous and capricious as the most sadistic tyrant in history. At least the Buddha that Addie tells me about doesn't pretend to control the world; he just sought a way to get out of it.

  There is a way, Bracknell would remind himself late at night as he lay in his bunk, afraid to close his eyes and see again in his nightmares the skytower toppling, crushing the life out of so many millions, crushing the life he had once known. I can get out of this, he thought. Slice my wrists, swallow a bottle of pills from Addie's infirmary, seal myself in an airlock and pop the outer hatch. There are lots of ways to end this existence.

  Yet he kept on living. Like a man on an endless treadmill he kept going through the paces of a pointless life, condemning himself for a coward because he lacked the guts to get off the wheel of life and find oblivion.

  Except for Addie he had no friends, no companions. The captain tolerated him, even socialized with him now and then, but always kept a clear line of separation between them. The women that occasionally joined the crew hardly appealed to him, except when his needs overcame his reluctance. And even in the throes of sexual passion he thought of Lara.

  If I could only see her, he thought. Talk to her. Even if it's only a few words.

  In the midst of his tortured fantasies he remembered the old message from Rev. Danvers, back when he'd just started this miserable banishment. Call me, the minister had said. Despite the fact that he was supposed to be held incommunicado with everyone back on Earth, Danvers had held out that slim hope.

  Bracknell was wise enough in the ways of his captain to ask Farad's permission before attempting to contact Danvers.

  The captain snorted disdainfully. "Call somebody Earthside? Won't do you any good, they won't put the call through."

  Desperate enough to overcome his fears, Bracknell replied, "You could put the call through for me, sir."

  The captain scowled at him and said nothing. Bracknell returned to his duties, defeated.

  Yet the next day, as Bracknell took up his station on the bridge, the captain said, "Take the comm console, Mr. Bracknell."

  Feeling more curiosity than hope, Bracknell relieved the communications officer. The captain told him to put through a call for him to the Reverend Danvers, routing it through New Morality headquarters in Atlanta. His fingers trembling, Bracknell wormed the speaker plug into his ear and got to work.

  With more than an hour's transit time for message
s, there was no hope of a normal conversation. It took half his duty shift for Bracknell to get through to the communications program at Atlanta and learn that Danvers was now a bishop serving in Gabon, on Africa's west coast.

  When Danvers's ruddy face finally came up on Bracknell's screen, the captain called from his command chair, "Go ahead and see if he'll talk to you."

  Danvers was sitting at a polished ebony desk, wearing an open-necked black shirt with some sort of insignia pinned to the points of his collar. Behind him a window looked down on the busy streets and buildings of Libreville and, beyond, the blue Atlantic's white-frothed combers rolling up on a beach. A dark cylindrical form snaked through the greenery beyond the city and disappeared in the frothing surf. Bracknell's heart clutched inside him: it was the remains of the fallen skytower, still lying there after all these years.

  It took more hours of one-way messages and long waits between them before Danvers realized who was calling him.

  "Mance!" Surprise opened his eyes wide. "After so many years! I'm delighted to hear from you." The bishop turned slightly in his high-backed chair. "You can probably see the remains of the skytower. It's a tourist attraction here. People come from all over Africa to see it."

  Bracknell's insides smoldered. A tourist attraction.

  "The locals have stripped a lot from it. Filthy scavengers. We've had to post guards to protect the ruins, but still they sneak in and rip off parts."

  Bracknell closed his eyes, trying to keep his temper under control. No sense getting angry with Danvers; he can't help the situation. Get to the point, tell him why you've contacted him.

  He took a breath, then plunged in. "I was wondering, hoping, that you might get a message to Lara Tierney for me," he said, embarrassed at how much it sounded like begging. "I don't know where she is now, but I thought perhaps you could find her and give her a message for me."

  Then he waited. His shift on the bridge ended and his replacement arrived at the comm console but the captain silently waved the woman away. Bracknell sat there attending to the ship's normal communications while his eyes constantly flicked back to the screen where Bishop Danvers's image sat frozen.

  At last the attention light beneath that screen went from orange to green. The bishop's image shimmered slightly and became animated. But his expression looked doubtful, uncertain.

  "Mance, she's Lara Molina now. She and Victor married more than eighteen months ago. I performed the ceremony."

  Bracknell felt his face redden with sudden anger.

  "Under the circumstances," Bishop Danvers continued, "I don't think it would be wise for you to contact her. After all, it would be illegal, wouldn't it? And there's no sense bringing up old heartaches, opening old wounds. After all, it's taken her all this time to get you out of her mind and begin her life again. Don't you agree that it would be better if you-"

  Bracknell cut the connection with a vicious stab of his thumb on the keyboard.

  Married, his mind echoed. She married Victor. The man who betrayed me. And that pompous idiot performed the ceremony. He betrayed me, too. They've all betrayed me!

  REVELATION

  For weeks Bracknell stormed through his duties aboard Alhambra, raging inwardly at Molina and Danvers. He wanted to be angry with Lara, too; he wanted to be furious with her. Yet he found he couldn't be. He couldn't expect her to live out the rest of her life alone. But with Victor? She married that lying, back-stabbing son of a bitch? She doesn't realize that Victor betrayed me, Bracknell told himself; Lara doesn't know that Victor lied in his testimony at the trial. But Victor knew, and so did Danvers. Of that Bracknell was certain. They had combined to put him out of the way so that Victor could have Lara for himself.

  Bracknell understood it all now. Victor betrayed him because he wanted Lara for himself. Once the skytower collapsed, Victor had the perfect opportunity to get me out of his way forever. And Danvers helped him, of that Bracknell was certain.

  Once the skytower collapsed, he repeated to himself. Could they have made the tower collapse? Caused it? Sabotaged it? Bracknell wrestled with that idea for weeks on end. No. How could they? Victor didn't know enough about the tower's construction to bring it down. He's a biologist, not a structural engineer. It would take a team of trained saboteurs, demolition experts. It would take money and planning and a ruthless cold-bloodedness that was frighteningly beyond Victor's capability. Or Danvers's. He doubted that even the New Morality at its most fanatical had the viciousness to deliberately bring the tower down. Or the competence.

  No, Bracknell concluded. Victor simply took advantage of his opportunity. Took advantage of me. And Danvers helped him.

  Still, his rage boiled inside him, made him morose and curt with everyone around him, even Addie. The captain watched his new attitude and said nothing, except once, when Bracknell was assigned to escorting a new group of convicts into their makeshift quarters down in the hold. One of the prisoners started a scuffle with another one. Bracknell dove into them swinging his stun wand like a club and beat them both unconscious.

  "You're starting to come back to life," the captain said after a pair of husky crewmen had pulled him off the bleeding prisoners. He made a strange, twisted smile. "You're starting to feel pain again."

  "I've felt pain before," Bracknell muttered as they trudged up the passageway toward the bridge.

  "Maybe," said the captain. "But now you can feel the demon gnawing at your guts. Now you know how I felt when they killed my wife. How I still feel."

  Bracknell stared at him with new understanding.

  Back and forth through the Belt sailed Alhambra, and then set out on the long, tedious journey to Earth to deliver refined metals and pick up convicts. It seemed to Bracknell, when he thought about it, that there were always more convicts waiting to be sent out to the Belt, always more men and women who'd run afoul of the law. Teenagers, too. The governments of Earth had found a convenient way to get rid of troublemakers: dump them out in the Asteroid Belt. They must be making the laws tighter all the time, more restrictive, he thought. Or maybe they're just using banishment to the Belt instead of other punishments.

  On one of Alhambra's stops at Earth, still another set of convicts was herded into the empty cargo hold-sixteen men and eleven women, most of them looking too frightened to cause any trouble. Only two of the bunch had been guilty of violent crimes: a strong-arm mugger and a murderer who had stabbed her boyfriend to death.

  Bracknell was surprised, then, when the alarm hooted shortly after they had locked the prisoners in the hold. From his duty station on the bridge he looked over at the intercom screen. Two men were beating up a third, a tall, skinny scarecrow of a man. He saw their hapless victim trying to defend himself by wrapping his long arms around his head, but his two attackers knocked him to the metal deck with a rain of vicious body blows, then began kicking him.

  "Get down there!" the captain snapped to Bracknell as he tapped on the controls set into the armrest of his command chair. Bracknell jumped up from his own seat, ducked through the hatch and sprinted toward the hold. He knew that the captain was dropping the air pressure in there hard enough to pop eardrums. They'll all be unconscious by the time I get to the hold, he thought.

  He could hear the footfalls of two other crewmen following him down the passageway. Stopping at the hatch only long enough to slip on the oxygen masks hanging on the wall, the three of them opened the hatch and pulled out three of the unconscious bodies: the bloodied scarecrow and his two attackers. Leaving the other crewmen to deal with the attackers, Bracknell picked up the victim and started running toward the infirmary. The man was as light as a bird, nothing but skin and bones.

  Addie was waiting at the infirmary. She allowed Bracknell to lay the unconscious man on one of the two beds there as she powered up the diagnostic sensors built into the bulkhead.

  "You should get back to the bridge," she said to Bracknell as she began strapping the man down.

  "As soon as he's secure," Bracknell s
aid, fastening a strap across the man's frail chest. "He's a prisoner, after all."

  The man moaned wretchedly but did not open his eyes. Bracknell saw that they were both swollen shut, and his nose appeared to be broken. Blood covered most of his face and was spattered over his gray prison-issue coveralls.

  "Go!" Addie said in an urgent whisper. "I can take care of him now."

  Bracknell headed back to the bridge. By the time he slid back into the chair before his console, he could see that the other convicts were stirring in the hold, regaining consciousness as the air pressure returned to normal. The two attackers were already sealed into hardshell space-suits and being dragged to an airlock.